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The asymmetry of importance
We tend to assume that in interactions with others, their view of the importance of the interaction matches ours. That assumption may be wrong, and can be problematic
“No man is an island, entire of itself,” wrote the poet John Donne, almost exactly four centuries ago. For someone whose day job involves studying and understanding people’s decisions, this is a significant and relevant observation. Humans are a social, cooperative species, and the choices people make, whether in a private capacity, or as an employee, almost always affect others — sometimes deliberately so, sometimes more inadvertently. When, occasionally (or perhaps not so occasionally), these decisions look odd, ill-considered or downright detrimental, the key to understanding (and improving) them often lies in a characteristic that may not be immediately obvious.
Many interactions between people take the form of an exchange. Both parties — typically a supplier and a customer — bring something to the table, and the transaction is successfully concluded if the exchange is beneficial for either side. This kind of win-win outcome is the foundation of our economy. We find it, for example, in employment arrangements, and in the provision of services and goods. At work, interactions between colleagues at work are similar in that there is also often a supplier and a customer, but usually there is no actual reciprocal trade. The interactions, in which one person typically provides information or effort to the other, are mostly governed by specific operational processes, along with implicit expectations tied to individuals’ roles and responsibilities.
What appears to determine these interactions is either the mutual benefit to the two participants, or a common framework of mutual expectations and obligations. But this limited perspective misses an important characteristic, namely how important the transaction (or the relationship in which transactions regularly take place) is for both participants.
The importance of importance
Last month, the Flemish public transport operator, De Lijn, implemented a plan to reorganize the service provision was announced last year. It involved cutting the…
